(JewishPress).During the US Presidential campaign the last summer 2008, Republican nominee Senator John McCain believed that to win, he needed to convince voters he was the "anti-Republican" Republican. McCain believed President Bush's low approval ratings meant the public had rejected the Republican Party.
But McCain's analysis was wrong. Americans had rejected Bush and his policies, not his party as a whole. Had McCain campaigned as the anti-Bush candidate by attacking Bush's passivity on issues like illegal immigration and the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs, and had he attacked Bush's big government policies, he would have successfully distanced himself from an unpopular president and rallied his base.
Moreover, he would have been able to attack Obama for pushing immigration, foreign policy and economic policies identical to or even more extreme than Bush's failed policies.
By incorrectly identifying the object of both Republican dissatisfaction and swing-voter concerns, McCain demoralized his base and convinced undecided voters it was okay to support Obama. Indeed, it was McCain's anti-Republican campaign more than Obama's change campaign that brought a majority of voters to Obama. As polling data indicates, Obama did not move many Republican voters to his side.
What enabled Obama to win the election was not a massive voter shift from right to left. Rather, Obama owes his victory in large part to the fact that McCain's anti-Republican campaign convinced a lot of Republicans that they had no one to vote for and so 4.1 million Republican voters stayed home on Election Day.
In Israel, Likud under Benjamin Netanyahu today has the advantage of running against Kadima, whose strategic and diplomatic programs have been largely rejected by voters. On the other hand, Netanyahu is running against Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni who is quite reasonably playing down her radical and failed policies and basing her campaign on her undeserved reputation for competence and her dubious public persona as a clean politician.
To win, Netanyahu and Likud should be doing two things. They should be continuously pointing out Kadima's record of failure in office and they should be attacking Livni. They should be emphasizing Livni's personal failures in office and focus the public's attention on the fact that she owes her political rise to her association with corrupt politicians like Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.
Then emphasize the policy distinctions between likud and Kadima, and make sure that the undecided voters shouldnt see a difference between Livni's policies and the current, and to make them uncomfortable to vote Kadima.
